Importing photos from a folder

In this movie, we're going to look at how we can import photographs that are alreadyin a folder on a hard drive into Lightroom.In order to make this a little bit more real life, I have opened up a New Catalog.And I did that by navigating the File dropdown menu and choosing New Catalog.Now, I opened up a New Catalog.So, as you can see there are no images inside the Lightroom.And you know a lot of times this is how you start in the Lightroom.You've already images in it.You already have all of your images organized, and you need to bring those images in to the Lightroom.So, how do you do that?Well, first thing is first.You navigate the File dropdown menu and you choose Import Photos from Disk.

Or use a shortcut, on the Mac that's Shift+Cmd+I, on a PC Shift+Ctrl+I.Now, that's one of those shortcuts you want to write down because,you're going to be importing photos in the Lightroom quite often.So, go ahead and select that.Next what I'm going to do is navigate to the exercise files folder.And then I'm going to go down to the Getting Started section of images in this 01 folder here.And I'll open that up and then I'm going to select the import folder.And again what I'm doing here is simulate, then I have these images inside of these foldersthat I really want to bring into the Lightroom.I want to keep them in that particular location.

So, I'm simply selecting that folder.That will then open up the Import Photos dialog window.Now, there are a couple of things that we want to do here.The first thing that I want to do with this particular dialog window is, I want to expand it.So, it takes up the entirety of my screen.You know there is no reason really to have a small Import Photos dialog window.There is no need to see Lightroom in the background.I want to really focus in on the task at hand.So I'm making this window nice and big.All right, well, a couple of different things that we can do here.One is make sure Show Preview is checked on.If it's checked off, you wont see the previews over there.

I want to have that turned on.The second thing that we can do is increase the Preview size of these particular thumbnails.Let's jump over to the left hand side, File Handling.We can add the photos to the catalog without moving or we've a number of different options.We can copy or move the photos to a new location, and then add them to the catalog.Now, why do you we want do that?Now you would want to copy the photos.If you've them in one location and you want to create another copy,so you've two versions of the same image, in a new location.You would want to move the photos, if you only want one version of the image.

You just want to relocate those images to a new location.And then finally you've an option to copy the photos as Digital Negatives and then add them to the catalogue.In this case, I'm pretending that I have these images organized in this folder, and I want to leave them as it is.I simply want to be able to access these images, inside of Lightroom.So, I'm going to choose Add photos to the catalog without moving.The next option that you'll notice is don't re-import suspected duplicates.You typically want to leave this checked on.Why you want that is because, it will help you out in case if you already imported an image,you wont import it again and have double import.

You typically only want one version of an image when you bring it into the Lightroom.So, leave that checked on.Now, there is some information we can apply to these particular images.There are a handful of different develop settings that come preinstalled with Lightroom.Now, if you install your own presets or create your own presets, those will show up here.So, you can apply those to the images upon import.Now my own workflow, I typically choose none because, I can apply those presets later.I can also apply some Metadata to these images.I can choose a particular preset.We'll be talking about Metadata and Metadata presets later.

But, if I had a preset like a copy write preset, I could add that to these particular images.So, that when I imported them, they all had my copy write information.Next, keywords, I want to add a few keywords to both of these images.I'm going to type out the word family and beach and Greg Lawler a good friend of our,who took these photos this last December.Next Initial Previews, my recommendation is that you go with a larger preview rather than a smaller preview.Now, this will increase the overall file size, it will slow things down a little bit.But, typically I found that it's worth it.

Again these go from small to large.In my own workflow, I choose the largest preview 1:1preview.And if this option does take a little bit of extra time and does increase the overall file size, I'm OK with that.Because, typically that extra bit of preview is worth it.Because what it means is I can get to the image quickly when I need it,rather than having to wait or to render the previews.So, in my opinion I would rather have all the weight in the front-end and then work on my images ratherthan have to wait on it on image per image basis.So, again, I'm going to choose that 1:1option.

Next, I'm going to click the old import button that will bring those images into Lightroom.Now I can double click the image, so take it to the view modeand then press the right arrow key to view the next image.And those images have now been successfully added, to my Lightroom catalog.

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Author

Released

8/1/2008

In Photoshop Lightroom 2 Essential Training, Chris Orwig explores Adobe's professional toolbox for image organization, processing, and output. He demonstrates effective use of catalogs, collections, keywords, and filters in the Library module; image correction and enhancement with the Develop module; and publishing the results via the Slideshow, Print, and Web modules. Chris also shares a wealth of creative tips and workflow techniques for capturing and processing stunning photographs. Example files accompany the course.

Topics include:

Understanding Lightroom's interface, modules, and new features

Importing photos from a folder, camera, or memory card

Sharing catalogs between multiple computers

Sorting and filtering with flags, ratings, labels, and other attributes